Many state junior high schools desks left vacant

JAKARTA (JP): Some state junior high schools in Jakarta have decided not to fill some of their places despite being oversubscribed.

The chief of the Jakarta office of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Sri Sudono Soemarto, said over the weekend that the decision was taken as many applicants' national final exams grades did not meet the schools' minimum requirements.

State Junior High School 80 (SMPN 80) has 28 unfilled places, followed by SMPN 256 with 16, SMPN 90 with 15, SMPN 204 and SMPN 281 both with 12, SMPN 7 with 11, SMPN 144 with seven, SMPN 138 and SMPN 97 both with five, and SMPN 44 with four, he said.

"The decision to leave the places vacant was taken Thursday after considering that the new school year starts on Monday (today)," Sri Soedono said.

A total of 161,497 junior high school students, 68,530 senior high school students and 63,702 vocational high school students sat the national final exams in Jakarta.

The number who passed was 161,311 junior high school students, 68,228 senior high school students and 63,309 students from vocational high schools, he said.

"Of that number 134,546 students registered for admission at state junior high schools, 76,208 students at state senior high schools and 77,964 students at state vocational schools," he said.

State junior high schools can only accommodate 92,255 students however (68 percent of the applicants), state senior high schools 36,461 students (47.8 percent) and vocational high schools 13,843 students (14.35 percent).

Sri Sudono said that many students with good academic qualifications preferred to register at state schools because of the much lower fees than at private schools.

State schools also manage to provide good quality education and good opportunities to gain access to other good schools, he said.

The head of administrative affairs at the ministry's Jakarta office, Alwi Nurdin, said that six cases of imposing additional school fees were being investigated.

He did not name the schools involved and just said that 362 students had complained about registration irregularities to the Ministry of Education and Culture's city office.

He also expressed regret over the registration computer system malfunctioning.

Alwi said that his office was open for complaints from parents whose children were mistakenly included in schools they did not choose.

"Frankly speaking, as under the new computerized system thousands of students had to be processed, human errors were unavoidable," he added. (01/hhr)